{"id":16066,"date":"2015-01-27T12:42:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16066"},"modified":"2015-01-27T12:53:45","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:53:45","slug":"tuesday-bag-o-anthropomorphism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16066","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Bag o’ Anthropomorphism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dachshund<\/a>Sorry, I can’t help it. None of us can. When we look at dogs we see ourselves in them, no matter how often scientists warn us against attributing human feelings, thoughts, and emotions\u00a0to non-human animals.<\/p>\n

I think dogs are a hell of a lot like us. They grow and learn, they have distinct personalities, and they’ve lived and worked with humans since the beginnings of time. Even the most disciplined and objective scientist, I bet, goes home at night and talks to his dog.<\/p>\n

I hope you’ll indulge me, then, as I try to get inside a dog’s\u00a0head.<\/p>\n

We live with two miniature dachshunds, Schatzi and Maxie. Schatzi is the elder, very much the alpha dog. We raised her from a tiny pup, house-training and teaching\u00a0her everything she knows about living with humans. Maxie is, we think, slightly younger; she came to us as an adult, perhaps five years old, her habits and behavior around people already formed.<\/p>\n

Their diet is regular: dry kibble in the morning, a dog treat in the middle of the day, wet food at dinnertime. The wet food consists of frozen meat pellets, which we buy in bags at the feed store and keep in the\u00a0freezer at home. The pellets\u00a0are made of beef, venison, lamb, chicken, rabbit, and duck —\u00a0we buy a different flavor each time. Since the pellets are\u00a0frozen, we\u00a0have to thaw them out first. Each night at dinnertime, as the dogs are eating, we put two fresh scoops of pellets in a plastic container which we leave in the fridge\u00a0to thaw\u00a0for tomorrow.<\/p>\n

When Schatzi and Maxie eat, they wolf their food in three or four gulps\u00a0and\u00a0finish together. Once they’re done Schatzi moves\u00a0over to Maxie’s bowl to lick the last traces of flavor from it, while\u00a0Maxie does\u00a0the same to\u00a0Schatzi’s bowl. Even so, I watch them while they eat, because sometimes Maxie is a little slower and Schatzi will try to muscle in on what’s left of her food.<\/p>\n

What slows Maxie down\u00a0is this thing she does where she jumps\u00a0back from her bowl, then warily sneaks back to finish her dinner. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it’s clear\u00a0something startled or frightened her. I\u00a0started\u00a0wondering what that something could be.<\/p>\n

Whatever it is, it never happens at breakfast or treat time, only at dinner and then not always. So it’s not a fear of food, nor does it seem to be\u00a0deference\u00a0to Schatzi’s alpha dog status. It’s something else, and I think it’s me or something I’m doing.<\/p>\n

Lately I’ve been watching Maxie closely as she eats. I’ve observed that she only jumps back from her bowl when I do a certain thing. Like the dogs, I\u00a0too have\u00a0a set dinnertime routine: I put one scoop of\u00a0thawed pellets in each bowl, then put the bowls on the floor. As the dogs start to eat, I turn to the freezer, open it and pull out the bag of frozen pellets, then scoop tomorrow’s dinner\u00a0into the plastic container to thaw.<\/p>\n

Maxie starts in on her dinner without a care in the world, but as soon as I make a move toward the freezer she starts keeping an eye on me.\u00a0She doesn’t jump back from her bowl until\u00a0I open the freezer door, or at least that’s what I thought until last night, when I\u00a0tried to observe her behavior more scientifically. Last night she kept eating as\u00a0I opened the freezer door, but jumped back the second I reached inside for the bag. I’ll try to confirm that at dinnertime tonight, but I don’t want to take it any farther than that.<\/p>\n

Exactly what it is that frightens her when I reach\u00a0inside the freezer for that bag\u00a0I’ll probably never know. But clearly it does frighten her, and that’s the last thing I want to do to this sweet little creature, who has always been wary and shy around humans. So after tonight, I’ll change my routine and stop preparing tomorrow’s dinner until both dogs have finished eating.<\/p>\n

\"2013-03-31<\/a>
Maxie and Schatzi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We think we know and understand Schatzi, since she grew up with us. Maxie was an adult when we got her, her mannerisms and habits already formed.\u00a0We don’t know much\u00a0about her prior life. For a year or so before she came to us, she belonged to\u00a0a friend’s daughter. The daughter was\u00a0starting her own life, changing jobs and moving from apartment to apartment, so she had to leave\u00a0Maxie with her mother, who already had two dogs of her own. Maxie was well loved by both daughter and mother,\u00a0but we thought we could give her more attention and a permanent\u00a0home, so we offered to adopt her.<\/p>\n

The thing is, Maxie lived with someone else, possibly more than one person, before living\u00a0with our friend’s daughter. We know nothing about that part of her life. Was she loved then, or was she neglected or abused? She had been spayed, but that’s all we knew about her medical history. Even her age was unknown — the vet, looking at her teeth, said she\u00a0was\u00a0probably a year younger than Schatzi.<\/p>\n

We once had a coyote-collie mix named Duke, who like Maxie was grown when we got him. One day I dropped a glass on the kitchen floor and reached for the broom. Duke yelped and ran for the hills. It was pretty obvious he\u00a0thought I was going to beat him with that broom, and he must have had a reason to think that, poor thing.<\/p>\n

Maxie, like Duke, is afraid of something. You can fault me for anthropomorphising, but when she jumps back from her dinner I see fear. Did a previous owner do something bad to her? Probably, but it’s hard to imagine what it could have been. If she shied away from brooms\u00a0and sticks,\u00a0like Duke, cause and effect would be clear. But reaching inside a freezer? What could be threatening about that? We’ll never know, but it’s real to Maxie, and now that I realize it’s scaring her I won’t be doing\u00a0it any more.<\/p>\n

Most people who adopt adult dogs and\u00a0cats call them rescues.\u00a0Technically, I guess, Maxie’s a rescue, but I don’t like to think of her as that. She had a pretty good life, at least the life we knew about, when we took her in. It’s not like we were rescuing her from the pound or something. We thought she’d have a more stable\u00a0life with us, and that she’d enrich our lives, and that’s how it’s turned out. Is she happy? If I may be allowed to attribute human emotions to a dog, I believe she is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry, I can’t help it. None of us can. When we look at dogs we see ourselves in them, no matter how often scientists warn us against attributing human feelings, thoughts, and emotions to non-human animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2],"tags":[1780,1781],"class_list":["post-16066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critters","category-personal","tag-animal-behavior","tag-anthropomorphism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16066"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16069,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066\/revisions\/16069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}